• Registered: 2012-09-14

Topic: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

I'm not really sure how to use this program properly.

Basically, I recently moved my iTunes folder from my C drive to my D drive and a large portion of songs were just 'forgotten' by iTunes somehow.
So before, they had their proper track names and the artist/album name and genre etc.
But now they're in the 'Unknown Arists' folder with just the song name followed by the track number that it would be on the album (so it would basically say '01 Planet Telex' and nothing else)

I put the whole 'Unknown Artists' section into the scanner, and it managed to find the albums that all the songs are from, but I don't know how to get Picard to actually rewrite those files so that they actually have the album/artist names etc.

I'm not really sure if I'm being clear, but if you get the gist of what I'm saying, then I'd really appreciate the help. I'd hate to have to rewrite nearly 200 songs manually.

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

I am not sure what you are asking...What happens when you click "Save" in Picard?

  • Registered: 2012-09-14

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

Well, I click save, and it says it's saved.
But when I go to look at the files, they're unchanged.

Is there something I have to do before actually 'saving'?

Btw, this is for a folder containing multiple songs by different artists and different albums.

  • Registered: 2011-07-18

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

iTunes doesn't always refresh the metadata from songs.
So you'll have to trigger a refresh in iTunes after you've changed the metadata of your songs outside of iTunes.

You could try this:

copy-paste from some post on a site wrote:

No really easy way, but this works:
- select all the songs that were updated (or just select all)
- Change a field in iTunes that you don't use yet, like maybe Grouping, Comment or Disk X of X, and change them all to a "A" or whatever.
- Click Ok. After the update, go back and change the field to "" and update again.

Not pretty but it beats doing all the songs one at a time.

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

I don't use iTunes but maybe it would look again at "new" files.

You could rename the files and move to a new location.

in Picard got Options-->Options-->File naming and select "rename files on saving" and "moves files to selected directory when saving".

That might force a refresh. *shrug*

  • Registered: 2011-10-24

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

If you are using a Mac I would look at http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000860.html which makes things a lot easier.

  • Registered: 2012-09-14

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

I still can't get it to work.

The file names haven't changed at all.
I've managed to move the files to a new location when saving, and it even creates a folder with the name of the album and the artist.
But the files' tags are still unchanged, and they still have the '01 Track Name' format that I want to get rid of.

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

Have the tags changed in any other music player? (like Winamp, windows media player, etc)

I am trying to determine if it is a problem with Picard (it works in everything else) or iTunes (only iTunes has the problem)

What OS are you using? (windows? What version? Mac?)

  • From: Oakland
  • Registered: 2009-04-07

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

crazyedd123 wrote:

I've managed to move the files to a new location when saving, and it even creates a folder with the name of the album and the artist.
But the files' tags are still unchanged, and they still have the '01 Track Name' format that I want to get rid of.

What you're describing sounds like the default file-naming for Picard.  That is, for a  simple single artist releases you should get

Path/To/Your/MusicFolder/[artist]/[release title]/[track number] [track title].[file extension]

And then how are you viewing your tags? Can you see them in Picard when you scan a track and it moves over to the right pane? You should (at least in Picard 1.0) see two columns in the bottom pane: "original value" (i.e. your current tags) and "new value" (i.e. the tags that Picard has retrieved from MusicBrainz). When/if you've hit "Save" both columns should have same values, naturally.

(I also use ex falso sometimes as a quick, simple tag reader.)

  • Registered: 2012-09-14

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

I decided to try and save the albums Picard recommends, so that I atleast have the songs in folders so I can sort through them easier.

But I now have the problem of Picard only saving songs to folders if it 100% recognises the songs.
So, if I have an album which has the golden disc symbol (all tracks are recognised), I can easily save all the songs into an album folder.
But, if I try to save an album with a few songs that weren't fully recognised (the ones which don't have ticks next to them), then it won't save the songs that weren't completely recognised.

How do I get around this? I really have no idea how to use this program.

  • Registered: 2012-10-16

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

Did you read this page? http://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_To_Tag_Files_With_Picard
It may take a couple of reads through but it make sense in the end.

I find if you copy some tracks out to a new folder you can experiment on them all day and see what works and what you like.

Maybe you need someone to help you come up with a naming convention and write a tagging script for it (I need help in this respect too!)

  • Registered: 2013-01-18

Re: Automatically tagging files for iTunes

You need to force iTunes to refresh. Here is the procedure:

1. Go to the File pulldown menu
2. Select "Add to Library..."
3. Navigate to the iTunes media folder that holds your music files for iTunes. Under iTunes 11.x it can be found at /Users/yourusername/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/
4. Click OK

Now you're thinking it will reimport all the music it finds and create havoc but all it does is trick iTunes into refreshing the db and rewriting the .xml files it uses to reference what it does (what ever that is).